Two days ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacked Congress President Rahul Gandhi, in a distinctly communal language, for simultaneously contesting from Wayanad constituency in Kerala. He had said that “Hindus were punishing (Rahul)”… therefore “he (Rahul) was forced to take refuge in a place where the majority has become the minority.”

Surely, then the opposite must be as true: “Hindu Modi” can never win in a dominant Muslim constituency, and only “Hindus” will make Modi win?

It’s no wonder then that the swathe of Western Uttar Pradesh that goes to polls on April 11—in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections—has put Modi in a bitter mood. The constituencies are Baghpat, Muzzafarnagar, Saharanpur, Meerut, Bijnor, Kairana, Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddh Nagar. Muslims constitute almost 42 per cent of the population in Muzaffarnagar; in Kairana it’s 52 per cent; Baghpat at 28 per cent; Saharanpur at 42 per cent; Bijnor at 43 per cent; Meerut at 34 per cent; it’s only in the urban towns of Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddh Nagar that Muslims are less than 15 per cent.

After the Hindutva fire blazed through the state post-Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), unsurprisingly, swept all the seats in the 2014 election. Today, the Muslim-Dalit-OBC votes, together because of the Rashtriya Lok Dal-Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party (RLD-SP-BSP) electoral alliance, is threatening to challenge the BJP dominance in the region. Except that the Congress’ decision to fight it alone could put brakes on the alliance in some constituencies.

The two young maulanas from Ladhawala Masjid, in Muzzafarnagar, Atal-ul-Haq and Mohammed Monish, realise the significance of their numbers. They say it shows in the controversial sitting BJP MP Sanjeev Balyan actually visiting their mohalla (neighbourhood) a few days ago. Atal-ul-Haq says, “Balyan came to us for the first time in five years, and chided us for not meeting him and starting a dialogue and association.”  Balyan, a Jat, is an accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots and is out on bail. He faces former Union Minister and fellow Jat, the RLD’s Ajit Singh, the Opposition’s candidate. The Congress is not contesting Muzaffarnagar. Balyan had won with an astounding 4.3 lakh votes, defeating his nearest rival, BSP’s Kadir Rana.

Haq says Balyan was chuffed that he was expected to come to meet them, after all, he was the MP. He adds that it was Ajit Singh who revived the Jat-Muslim mohabbat (affection). “We are all standing here together because of it,” he says, looking around the marketplace in the main town. Monish says the affection was revived because both Hindu and Muslim youth worked at it.

Social activist Narendra Pal Verma blames the erstwhile Akhilesh Yadav government for the communal violence. “What should have been contained as a law and order problem blew into a religious flare-up as the Akhilesh Yadav administration was seen as being partisan to the Muslims. The BJP stoked the brewing resentment among the Jats, which led to a Hindu consolidation in favour of the BJP,” says Verma. “Today, the situation is reversed, it’s a caste-religious consolidation against the BJP,” he adds.

The activist is expansive as he sits with a small audience of Muzaffarnagar’s traders and businessmen in the plush garden of Congress leader and businessman Pankaj Agarwal, who contested the 2014 poll but came a dismal fourth at the bottom. Agarwal says, “The business community, there are around 5,000 small traders and shopkeepers, will go to the BJP, lootne aur pitne ke baad bi (even after being looted and beaten). The upper castes here take more pride in nationalism, surgical strikes etc.”

Clearly, the Jat-Muslim-Dalit-OBC combine can give Modi a run for his money in Western UP. Ajit Singh is expected to sweep Muzaffarnagar, but what if Hindu consolidation is pushed again—tilting it in the BJP’s favour as in 2014?

It is 22-year-old Anil Bharti, a Dalit and BSP worker who puts it in perspective: “I voted for Modi and BJP in 2014 because after the rioting—a few months before the election—we were divided as Hindus and Muslims. I went to vote as a Hindu. But I was soon made to realise that we will never be considered Hindu. When I was returning from the voting booth, the upper caste people asked I must surely have voted for haathi (BSP symbol), not kamal, (BJP symbol). We are always marked as Dalits even 70 years after Independence. That’s when I realised that we will never be accepted and I’ve decided I’ll never vote for the BJP again.”

Bharti says Modi’s promises of development and upliftment are all bunkum. Most Dalits are angry with his government’s anti-Dalit policies—first, the deliberate lingering on the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act; then to counter upper caste anger, the 10 per cent reservation granted by the Modi government to economically weaker upper castes; and now the proposed 13-point roster system that would eventually reduce reserved posts for teachers in universities, he adds. “Modi has blown up ₹4,000 crores on his foreign trips, but where is the FDI in return,” he asks angrily. “Such a waste of money,” he says.

n>

Saharanpur is in a piquant situation, can the high Muslim majority save the day for the Opposition, or could the division amongst them help the BJP? Consider this: the RLD-BSP-SP alliance has fielded the BSP’s Fazlur Rahman, an influential businessman owning meat and food processing factories. The Congress too has fielded a prominent Muslim candidate, Imran Masood, who lost to the BJP MP Raghav Lakhanpal in 2014, by only 60,000 votes even during the Modi wave.

The BJP is already stoking the communal fire: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has called the Congress candidate “son-in-law of Masood Azhar” (a Pakistani terrorist); he began his campaign at the Shakumbhari temple. The BSP’s Mayawati and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav are slated to have their first joint rally on April 7 from the Deoband seminary, provoking Yogi to point out their “orientation and priorities”.

The Muslims are expected to vote tactically and all indications are that the BSP’s Rahman could romp home with the party’s core Dalit base.

The other Dalit disruptor, Bhim Army’s Chandrashekhar Azad is also backing the BSP after dillydallying about an alliance with the Congress or running as an independent. Daulat Gautam, who works in a catering company in Saharanpur, and a Bhim Army colleague says, “We will go with whoever promises to take up the cause of Dalits. Azadji will be aligning with Mayawatiji.” Azad “Ravan” exploded on the scene after violent caste clashes erupted between Dalits and Thakurs (Yogi’s brethren) two years ago in Saharanpur’s Shabbirpur village.

In Kairana, the SP’s candidate Tabassum Hassan, who has barely enjoyed her success of a resounding victory last year in a by-poll, after its sitting BJP MP Hukum Singh died in office, is confident of a victory. In a straight fight with the BJP, Hassan got 51 per cent of the votes. She was then an RLD candidate. However, more than the caste and religion card in her favour, it’s the anger of the BJP workers that could also give her the added push. Singh’s daughter, Mriganika, and her father’s followers in the party have been smarting ever since she was denied a ticket.

The BJP leadership gave the ticket to a Jat, Pradeep Chaudhary, leaving the Gujjars (Singh’s clan) fuming over the slight. The resentment is aggravated as the BJP has retained almost all its sitting MPs in the region. As a BJP worker, who didn’t want to be named, said, “It’s going to be tough for us with the Muslims, Dalits and Gujjars against us.” The Congress has also jumped into the fray with its candidate Harinder Malik, but the bets are that Malik will come a feeble third in the race.

In Ghaziabad, the Congress’ surprise candidate Dolly Sharma, is hoping to woo the upper castes which are in sizeable numbers, says a Congress strategist. Sharma, who contested and lost the mayoral election against BJP candidate Asha Sharma in 2017, has her caste landscape chalked out, and the BJP certainly has an edge here.

Moreover, any victory for the Congress will have to make a dent in sitting BJP MP General VK Singh, the irrepressible motormouth (of the “presstitute” fame) who came only second to Modi’s victory of the highest margin, in Ghaziabad, Singh won with over a 5-lakh margin. The caste and religion arithmetic even forced the Mahagathbandhan to pull out their candidate, Surendra Kumar Munni, a Brahmin, to put up Suresh Bansal, from the Vaishya or trading caste. Munni and Sharma would have eaten into each other’s votes—was the common refrain from both sides. Bansal, a former BSP MLA, is expected to influence the business community for its votes. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Congress’ new campaigner is expected to hold a roadshow on April 5, to campaign for Dolly Sharma.

The BJP hopes for a hat-trick in Meerut for its two-time MP Rajendra Agarwal, but it seems the Congress has rushed in to help the RLD-SP-BSP candidate by putting up another Agarwal, Harendra Agarwal, hoping to cut into the BJP votes. The Mahagathbandhan candidate is none other than Yaqoob Qureshi, a fierce Islamist, who infamously put out a bounty of ₹51 crore on a Danish cartoonist for disrespecting Islam in 2006. He offered the cash prize to the perpetrators after the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris in 2015.

Over the last few years, Qureshi has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. His daughter, Najma, was booked in 2017 for roughing up a school teacher and administrator with sticks and a whip. His son was picked up for a drunken brawl and for attacking police personnel a year before. The authorities also shut down Qureshi’s meat factory in Meerut, a few months ago, for flouting rules. The former MLA has swung between the BSP and RLD, but his candidature can only polarise votes in favour of the BJP. Though, his parties are hoping to woo the 16 per cent scheduled caste votes.

So, will the Jat belt of Western UP set the trend on April 11 for the rest of the state in the seven-phase 2019 elections? Have the old traditions of “bhaichara (brotherhood)” and “mohabbat (affection)” that kept the once farming communities together—but was recently shredded by communal hostilities and riots—been woven back together again? Can the BJP harvest a bumper crop yet again from hate politics or has the Opposition alliance mended the gashes? It seems to be going for the latter. Perhaps, it is ‘Shooter Dadi’, the 87-year-old prize-winning sharpshooter Chandro Tomar, who puts Jat philosophy at the heart below.

Video credit: Sumit Rathi